Word: bunkers
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...meant to suggest to American audiences, was the source of All in the Family. In its original television version, called Till Death Us Do Part, it enjoyed enormous success, but the Alf of the series and of this caustic film (Warren Mitchell) is no lovable oaf like Archie Bunker. He is a meanspirited, loudmouthed, craven boozer who is portrayed by Writer Johnny Speight and Director Norman Cohen with deadly dispassion...
Guinness has worked hard on Hitlerian mannerisms: the walk, the deep, throaty voice, the oddly limp salute. He has studied newsreels, books and photographs, even interviewed a survivor of those last days in the bunker. At that time, says Guinness, "Hitler was almost senile; at the age of 56, he was 70. He took pep pills, and at times he would have fits. At other times he would get the giggles. I try to convey that comic side. You know, he could be extremely childlike as well as childish...
Guinness's script was written by Italian Screenwriter-Director Ennio de Concini, Maria Pia Fusco, and Austrian Producer Wolfgang Reinhardt, son of famed Director Max Reinhardt. In persuading Guinness to take the part, De Concini recalls, "I told him I saw the last days in the bunker like floating into nowhere in a first-class jumbo jet. You go into unreality, between life and death-der Führer crying, Eva Braun dancing to Tea for Two, the Nazi empire falling into destruction. I wanted to film all this in the manner of an 8-mm. movie...
Ollie is hardly the patriarchal Kentucky colonel type. A 60-year-old native of Brooklyn, he looks and sounds more like Archie Bunker's big brother. But his hamburgers are something else: one-third pound of lean meat seasoned with 32 spices and a special sauce. Gleichenhaus, who insults customers and employees with equal abandon, takes his seasoning seriously; he often chastises patrons who unknowingly ask for ketchup or mustard...
...masterpiece: "Those yo-yos are looking for a short way to make my burgers, but there's no way other than the right way." Even so, Brown intends to go nationwide with Ollie-burgers within a year, and has prepared 63 television commercials featuring Ollie in "an Archie Bunker kind of approach." The rest may some day be history...